The six-month text thread

A round at Friar’s Head, four near-strangers, and the group text that never quite produced a second one.

The round at Friar's Head, that morning in June, had been one of those rounds. The four of them had not all met before. Two had played together once, years earlier. The other two were a friend of a friend and a man from a neighboring club who had asked, through a mutual contact, if he could join. The morning was foggy in that specific Long Island way where the fairways look like they end ten yards beyond where they actually do.

By the 18th green they had agreed to play again before the end of the season.

They didn't.

A.S. is the one who started the group text. He sent it from the parking lot, around 1:30 in the afternoon, on the way back to his car. The text said: "Best round I've had in a while. Friar's again before September?" All three of the others replied within an hour. M.J., the friend of a friend, said yes. T.L., the man from the neighboring club, said yes. C.W. — who had been at Pine Valley for fourteen years and had been A.S.'s actual contact in arranging the original round — said yes.

The first attempt to schedule came two weeks later. A.S. proposed three Saturdays in July. M.J. was traveling in Japan. T.L. could do the first Saturday but not the others. C.W. could do the second Saturday but not the others. The first Saturday, by the time M.J. got back, was eight days away. M.J. said: "Let me see if my wife can take the kids. Will confirm Wednesday." Wednesday came and M.J. said his wife couldn't. The first Saturday passed.

The second attempt came in early August. T.L. was now in the middle of a difficult deal at work. C.W.'s daughter had started college; he was driving her to Boston that weekend. A.S. and M.J. could have played a twosome but did not — it wasn't the point.

The third attempt came at the end of August. By then the urgency had drained out of the thread. The replies were slower. The new proposed dates were pushed two weeks out, then three. By the end of September the thread had become a thread that any of them might have referenced — "I should reach out to those guys" — but that none of them, anymore, was actually managing.

The thread was last messaged in November. T.L. sent a single line: "Should we try to do this before the season ends?" No one replied. The season ended.

"It wasn't anyone's fault. It was just the way these things go."

C.W. said this in conversation, almost two years later, after he had become a member of Tee Time. The other three had all become members within four months of him. The four of them had played together six more times by the time we talked — twice at Friar's Head, twice at Pine Valley, once at Shinnecock, and once on a trip to Bandon that the four of them had organized through the app over the course of two weeks.

The trip to Bandon was, by C.W.'s account, the round that retroactively explained the original round. They had played thirty-six holes a day for three days. They had stayed in adjacent rooms at the lodge. They had spent two evenings in the same booth at the McKee's pub at Bandon. By the end of the trip, they were not the four near-strangers who had played Friar's Head two years earlier. They were a foursome. The grammar had changed.

Some rounds need a second round to become what they were.

A.S. is a real estate developer in Stamford. M.J. lived for a number of years in northern Japan and now runs a small import business in Westchester. T.L. is a tax attorney in midtown. C.W. is the Philadelphia private-equity managing partner whose first round at Pine Valley appeared in this publication last month.

The four of them, between them, have been members of seven different private clubs, in three different states. None of those clubs has any formal relationship with any of the others. The original round at Friar's Head had been arranged through an informal chain — a friend of a friend, a member from a neighboring club, a mutual contact. The chain had worked once. It had failed to work, over the course of six months and six attempts, a second time.

The thread of texts on A.S.'s phone, the one that began on the 18th green at Friar's Head and ended without resolution in November, is still there. He scrolled through it for the writer of this piece, in his office in Stamford, on a Wednesday afternoon. The thread is sixty-seven messages long. The vast majority of them are scheduling messages. None of them produced a second round.

The thread that exists now — the one in the Tee Time app, the one the four of them use to coordinate their actual rounds — is shorter. The messages are more functional. The coordination is faster. The rounds happen.

When asked what changed, C.W. said: "The first thread was four people trying to find a time. The second thread is four people who already know there's a time."

The difference is small. The difference is everything.

Find your foursome. The second time.

Members in this piece appear with their permission. Initials are used at their request.

The Journal Staff writes for The Journal.

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